How to buy items on twitter

Twitter's giving new meaning to impulse buy.
The social network known for relaying information
quickly is testing a way for mobile shoppers to
purchase items directly from tweets. A small
percentage of US users will see a "Buy" button
within tweets, Twitter announced Monday.
"This is an early step in our building functionality
into Twitter to make shopping from mobile
devices convenient and easy, hopefully even fun,"
Twitter said in a blog post . The service, available
for Twitter's iOS and Android app, will eventually
expand to more users.
It's a potential revenue stream for a company
that's still figuring out how to make money off its
users. Currently, Twitter's main business is
advertising. Adding an e-commerce component
also gives Twitter the ability to store users' credit
card information for repeat purchases. Reports of
this service have circulated the rumor mill for
several months.
To power the service, Twitter partnered with e-
commerce sites Fancy, Gumroad, and Musictoday,
as well as payment service Stripe. It's not clear
how Twitter is splitting the profits with its
partners. The companies cover a wide range of
products and services -- Fancy uses social media
to sell physical products, Gumroad is a platform
for digital products and Musictoday was a pioneer
in pre-sale concert tickets.
After hitting "Buy," a user will see the product's
details and a prompt for shipping and payment
information. Once that's complete and submitted,
Twitter will hand the order over to the merchant.
The company said the information is encrypted --
merchants won't see the actual credit card
information without permission -- and stored after
the first purchase, but users can also remove the
information from their accounts.
Twitter is coupling the button with special offers
and exclusive merchandise from merchants, which
includes brands and music artists like Burberry,
Home Depot, Demi Lovato, and Pharrell, as well
as nonprofits like GLAAD and DonorsChoose. The
company said it's adding more merchants in "the
coming months."
Twitter isn't the first social media to try out
shopping within its channels. Facebook started
testing "buy" buttons within ads in July, and third
party companies have been experimenting with
selling things through social networks, including
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, for years. Even
e-commerce giant Amazon has entered the social
media shopping game. It launched its own
campaign in May, allowing consumers to tweet
hashtags that add items to their Amazon carts